バートランド・ラッセル『ヒューマン・ソサエティ－倫理学から政治学へ』第２部[「情熱の葛藤」- 第２章- Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, Part II, chapter 9
* 原著：Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954* 邦訳書：バートランド・ラッセル(著),勝部真長・長谷川鑛平(共訳)『ヒューマン・ソサエティ－倫理学から政治学へ』(玉川大学出版部,1981年７月刊。268+x pp.)
『ヒューマン・ソサエティ』第２部「情熱の葛藤」- 第10章「 」n.5 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, part II: The Conflict of Passions, chapter 10: Prologue or Epilogue? n4 |
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Man, as the Orpines said, is also the child of the starry heaven. Man, tliough his body is insignificant and powerless in comparison with the great bodies of the astronomer's world, is yet able to mirror that world, is able to travel in imagination and .scientific knowledge through enormous abysses of .space and time. What he knows already of the world in which he lives, would be imbelievable to his ancestors of a thousand years ago; and in view of the .speed with which he is acquiring knowledge there is every reason to think that, if he continues on his present course, what he will know a thousand years from now will be eiiually beyond what we can imagine. But it is not only, or even principally, in knowledge that man at his best deserves admiration. Men have created beauty; they havq had strange visions that seemed like the fiflfe glimpse of a land of wonder; they have been capable of love, of .sympathy for the whole human race, of vast hopes for mankind as a whole. These achievements, it is true, have been those of exceptional men, and have very frequently met with hostility from the herd. But there is no reason why, in the ages to come, the sort of man who is now exceptional should not become usual, and if that were to happen, the exceptional man in that new world would rise as far above Shakespeare as Shakespeare now rises above the common man. So much evil use has been made of knowledge that our imagination does not readily rise to the thought of the good uses that are possible in the raising of the level of excellence in the population at large to that which is now only achieved by men of genius. When I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, and that it will some day learn to give the direction of its alFairs, not to cruel mountebanks, but to men possessed of wisdom and courage, I see before me a shining vision: a world where none are himgry, where few are ill, where work is pleasant and not excessive, where kindly feeling is common, and where minds released from fear create delight for eye and ear and heart. Do not say this is impossible. It is not impossible. I do not say it can be done tomorrow, but I do ^ay that it could be done within a thousand years, if men would bend their minds to the achievement of the kind of happiness that should be distinctive of man. I say the kind of happiness distinctive of man, because the happiness of pigs, which the enemies of Epicurus acouse him of seeking, is not possible for men. If you try to make yourself content with the happiness of the pig, your suppressed potentialities will make you miserable. True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost. For such men, in the world of the present day, happiness must be mixed with much pain, since they cannot escape .sympathetic suffering
in the spectacle of the sufferings of others. But in a sticiety w'here this source of pain no longer existed, there could be a human happiness more complete, more infused with imagination and knowledge and sympathy, than anything that is possible to those condemned to live in our present gloomy epoch. |